Literary Notices.

[We hold it to be the duty of an Editor either to give an early notice of the books sent to him for remark, or to return them at once to the Publisher. It is unjust to praise worthless books; it is robbery to retain unnoticed ones.]

THE REVIEWER'S CANON.

In every work regard the author's end,

THE BOOK OF JOB.

Since none can compass more than they intend.

By the late HERMANN HEDWIG BERNARD, PH.D., M.A. Edited, with a Translation and additional Notes, by FRANK CHANCE, B.A., M.B. Vol. I., (containing the whole of the original work). London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co.

THE erudite and profound author of this book was, for seven and twenty years, Hebrew teacher in the University of Cambridge; a fact, which, in itself, is a guarantee of competency to deal with this, the oldest and greatest poem of the world. The following are some of the advantages which Dr. Bernard's exposition of this book possesses over all others with which we are acquainted. (1) The bards of this old poem, or if you will, the actors of this old drama, are so treated throughout that their characters are found to remain intact from the outset to the end. (2) The speech of Elihu, which most other expositors have treated as empty bombastic, the grandiloquent utterance of a shallow, conceited, and presumptuous youth, is here made to appear the most sage-like and eloquent part of the book. (3) The exposition is conducted by the help of the Hebrew contained in the Bible itself, and not, as is generally the case, by constant recourse to cognate languages. (4.) Scarcely a verse or even a word is employed in the interpretation disagreeing with the established version, the reason and the rectitude of which the author does not endeavour to justify. Into the questions as to what class the book may be considered to belong, whether the speakers were fictitious or real characters; if they existed, where they lived, and who was really the author of the work, Dr. Bernard does not enter. His ruling purpose has been to ascertain the train of reasoning pursued throughout. As the production of one of the first Hebraists of our age, a shrewd and profound thinker, a ripe scholar, greatly possessed with the spirit of the thought and religion of the ancients, this work will be hailed by every genuine Biblical student.

THE BAMPTON LECTURES. By J. HANNAH, D.C.L. London: John Murray. THIS work contains eight lectures, the subjects of which are:-Inspiration and Revelation, their respective definitions and range: The reality

of the Revelation as established by a contrast with heathen religions: The reality in the Inspiration as illustrated by the Atinomies of Scripture: Its reality as illustrated by the duplex sensus: The Human Element: History and Science: Moral Difficulties. Superiority of Scripture to its writers: and-General Conclusion. The mere statements of the subjects will indicate to our readers that the volume touches the vitalities of the great book of Scripture. The reverent and learned author discusses these momentous subjects with great ability, and in a spirit scientific and devout. The work is worthy of a place by the side of the most-famed volumes in the Bampton Series.

FRUITS FROM CANAAN'S BOUGHS. By JOHN RUDALL, Barrister-at-Law. London: James Nisbet & Co.

THE author of this book considers that in no age of the Church was Divine truth more powerfully exhibited than during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and with the great religious writers of those ages he has held fellowship for many years, made extracts from their ponderous folios and worm-eaten volumes. The result is this work. Belonging as the author evidently does to what has been called the "savoury school" of orthodox Christians, his selections agree with his own spirit and views. He has not perhaps sought the most racy, farreaching and brilliant utterances of the old writers, but those sweet and comforting things that the Christians of his own type will relish and prize.

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE IN ENGLAND. BY SAMUEL ROWLES PATTISON. London: Jackson, Walford & Hodder.

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THIS work comprises a rich store of historic information of a very valuable kind. The author looks at the history of England through the conviction, that its progress in every thing that is good in man is to be ascribed to Christianity. "The first Christianity of this country," says the author, was communicated by an impulse of that wave which beginning its flow at Jerusalem, on the death of the proto-martyr Stephen, passed over Asia Minor, by Macedonia, into Greece; thence to Italy, Africa, Spain and Gaul; everywhere fertilizing as it flowed. It came to us colored with some few corruptions which had been thrown into its pure waters in their westward course, but still free from the baneful mixtures which Rome afterwards added to the noble current. The earliest historical relations of British Christianity, rejecting the hypotheses which would assign its origin to Apostolic preaching-or to the influence of Claudia, celebrated by the verse of Martial, and possibly the same as is referred to in the epistle to Timothy-or to Brau, the father of the patriotic British king Caractacus, appear to have been with ecclesiastical Gaul, of which Lyons and Vienne were the chief cities.

From this circumstance our historians have deduced the pedigree of British Christian doctrine and discipline from Antioch rather than from Rome, and this conclusion is supported by Neander and by Lappenbury as well as by our own writers." We could write much on this work, for though small in bulk, it is fraught with suggestions. It traces the very life's blood of English history, as it runs through the veins of ages.

MEMORABLE EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF A LONDON PHYSICIAN. In Three Parts. London: Virtue Brothers.

"The members of the profession," says the author of this book, "of the present day are all at sixes and sevens. Whether in opinion or in practice, there is nothing but doubt and disagreement prevailing in their ranks. Allopathy, Homœopathy, Hydropathy, Chrono-thermalism! Thirty years ago you never heard these words. Physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries thirty years ago, all squared their measures by a common creed. In theory, as in practice, one and all held a community of tenet, seemingly as unchanging and unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. According to the whole profession then, and-if the truth be toldaccording to many of them still, the root of every disease is 'inflammation." This short extract suggests to the reader what to expect in the pages of this work. The writer's strictures upon orthodox physicians and practitioners are such as to shake the confidence of the public both in their science and in their skill. It would be well if the indolent, and the morbid, those who are looking at their tongues and feeling their pulses because they have nothing else to do, and who are, therefore, constantly calling in the doctors to their house, would read this work. It would scatter their delusions, keep them away from medicine, make them healthier people, and save their pockets. The book is full of valuable information, and thoroughly interesting.

DIVINE COMPASSION. BY JAMES CULROSS, A.M.

London: Nisbet & Co. The object of this work is to show the mercy of God to man, by Christ's treatment of the sinners who appealed to Him. The woman of Samaria, the man born blind, little children, the rich young man, Peter, and the dying thief, are some of the examples he selects. The idea of the book is a happy one, and is impressively wrought out.

THE TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Newly Translated, Explained, Illustrated, and Applied. By REV. A. B. GROSART, First U. P. Church, Kinross. London: Nisbet & Co.

MR. GROSART is a quaint and curious author, one who well exemplifies the maxim, "Reading maketh a full man." Nothing in prose or verse

of any school of divinity, seems to have escaped him. We cannot enter into the points which invite remark in the mysterious conflict between the Prince of Light and the Prince of Darkness, between our Living Friend and our Living Foe. We have already discussed the subject, and our author refers in his volume with commendation to what we have advanced. In addition to the original matter-which contains a new translation, with Critical Remarks-the author presents us with many choice passages from writers unknown and well-known; among whom are Hacket, Gumbleden, Leighton, Beaumont, Andrewes, Udall, Manton, Taylor, Trapp, Manning, Arnold, Kingsley, Wilberforce. Nowhere in so small a compass have we met with so valuable and copious a collection of extracts, all of which bear on the elucidation of the subject. Among the topics which will not command universal acceptance, is where Mr. G. gravely recommends ministers to discard Jay, Simeon, and to read Shakespeare by way of preparation for the pulpit. His estimate of recent editions of the Greek Testament is amusingly graphic. The one by Webster and Wilkinson is the only one which pleases him, as having no pretentiousness, no dogmatism, and superior to any for ripe scholarship, spiritual insight, suggestiveness, truthfulness; a judgment this, on which we have more than once pronounced. Dean Alford is described as perpetually disappointing and inexact, betraying great want of deliberation and thoroughness of scholarship. Dr. Wordsworth is said to be full of patriotic lore and nonsense, dexterous in evading difficulties, raising enormous buttresses of quotations to keep up rotten beams. Our readers would do well to procure this remarkable work.

CRISIS OF BEING; Six Lectures to Young Men on Religious Decision. By the REV. DAVID THOMAS, D.D., Stockwell. Also, the PROGRESS OF BEING, by the same author. A New Edition. London: Jackson, Walford & Hodder.

BEING So closely connected with the author of these volumes, we have not the heart to condemn them, nor the immodesty to praise them. Suffice it to say that many thousands of each have been sold. Young men in every part of the world have acknowledged the good they have derived from them; and they now appear in a new form, and at a reduced price (eighteenpence).

GOOD STORIES. No. I.-THE PEACEMAKER: A Christmas Story. No. II.

FOUR LADS AND THEIR LIVES: A Night-School Story. Selected and Edited by J. ERSKINE CLARKE, M.A. London: W. Macintosh. THESE are the first two numbers of a new serial. The stories are selected with taste and judgment; the illustrations are striking; the "getting up" unique and beautiful. The name of the Editor is a guarantee for sterling thought, catholic spirit, and literary excellence.

A HOMILY

ON

The World's Cry

Concerning the Method of being brought into Fellowship with God.

"Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God?"-Micah vi. 6.

N our last Homily, our attention was directed to "Man's Felt Distance from his Maker." We sought for an explanation of this feeling in three sources :

human philosophy, speculative theology, and Divine revelation. We found it in the last, and nowhere else. Here we learned that man's iniquities have produced the distressing separation between him and his Maker. It is not that God has withdrawn from us, but that we are alienated from Him by wicked works. The feeling of the distance is misery-is hell; and the vital question now to consider is, How can it be removed? How can the twain, the soul and its God, be one again? "Wherewith shall we come before the Lord?" This is another of the world's cries. A cry-deep, loud, continuous. Where can we get a satisfactory response? There are three, and only three, answers: that which has reference to the presentation of sacrifices, that which has reference to a right moral conduct, that which has reference to the intervention of Christ. Let us look a little into each of these three, and see which, if either, furnishes the solution.

First: There is that which has reference to presentation of sacrifices. "Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, calves?" &c. This is the way in which heathens have sought to bridge the gulf between themselves and their Maker. Yes, and

VOL. XIV.

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